*Strange, why hadn't it started yet?*
The people in the room had already prepared for the meeting, but after waiting for a while, they didn't hear the leader who was supposed to host the meeting start speaking. They all cast strange looks over.
Then everyone noticed that the leader, who had just been menacingly questioning "Little Baskin," was now, for some reason, staring blankly at Little Baskin with a dazed expression.
In his bloodshot and cloudy eyes, which had been up all night, there were signs of fear, doubt, panic, confusion... various weak and chaotic emotions, paired with his slightly greying temples, making him look unusually...
With this strange thought arising in their minds, the rebels in the room were unconsciously startled.
The true age of their leader should not yet be fifty. While his features were somewhat aged and his eyes often carried an inexplicable fatigue, he was still considered to be in his prime.
Therefore, among these rebels in the room, although some were dissatisfied with his autocracy, some questioned his decisions, and some wanted to pull him down and take his place, none of them really thought he was already old.
Accompanied by a slightly rising intonation inquiry, the attention of the rebels was pulled from the head of the long table and fell on Little Baskin seated at the lowest position.
This young man, not yet twenty, although slightly slender, looked very upright. Even sitting on a low chair without a backrest, his spine remained straight without the slightest hunch.
He likely hadn't slept well last night either, with his black hair slightly disheveled, bits of frost clinging to his collar, and his eyes harboring considerable bloodshot, yet those dark, shiny eyes remained lively and keen, as if pouring out boundless energy.
Especially when looking at the leader at the head of the table, those eyes emitted a focused gaze, faintly carrying a scorching heat that could capture a soul, like a young predator who had spotted an old weak antelope, baring its sharp claws and fangs at the prey with nowhere to escape...
*Was this the "tiger" that Teague referred to? It indeed seemed so...*
Witnessing this stark contrast, aside from Phoebe, who was sitting in a chair with a candy in her mouth, all the others in the room had almost the same thought surge through their minds.
The leader... seemed to be really old.
Unaware that his "intent to capture" on middle-aged Joshua had already been misinterpreted by the rebels as ambitious intent, Leon, anxious to gather intelligence after waiting so long without the meeting starting, frowned slightly and couldn't help but voice a reminder:
"Just now, you first doubted my true identity and then questioned my actual ability, wasting a lot of unnecessary time. Now it's time to proceed with the meeting!"
Hearing the loud reminder from Little Baskin, the middle-aged man couldn't help but tremble slightly, finally struggling out of that strange sense of loss. However, facing the gazes from everyone, the topics he had prepared all night became abnormally stagnant, and he couldn't express them no matter what.
*I seem to know what it was that just "slipped away" from me.*
Feeling this indescribable "sense of domination" and seeing the gradually strange gazes of the rebels, the middle-aged man finally understood what he had lost after the two rounds of confrontation.
It was the "power of speech" to actively control the situation, the "trust" granted as a leader, and even the "blind faith" gradually cultivated through past correct judgments!
And these things were the most basic form of power!
*'Although I haven't read much, politics is essentially about making more people believe in you, recognize your judgment, and be willing to listen to you, thereby gathering enough power to change the status quo.'*
Recalling what Little Baskin mentioned last night, and comparing it to the scene before him, the middle-aged man couldn't help but feel a wave of powerlessness.
*So... Did Little Baskin just show me those two flaws to make me make two wrong judgments in front of everyone, thereby shaking the credibility of my words, and then seize some of the power of speech?*
*Could it be that he had already begun to plot to seize the leader's position from my hands even before entering this meeting room? Or... perhaps even the questions from last night were a form of test for me?*
Carrying a belly full of doubts and a colossal sense of crisis, like sitting on pins and needles, the middle-aged man had no choice but to take a deep breath and, following Leon's "instructions," started hosting the meeting:
"Today... we need to determine our next actions for the coming period, starting with Teague."
Pulling out a few pre-marked maps from the materials he had prepared the night before and pushing them across the long table, the middle-aged man stared intently at Little Baskin and said expressionlessly,
"Your task remains the same as before: continue leading people to set fires at Louther Arcade and the surrounding affluent areas, but the intensity and scope must continually expand!"
*Start fires in Louther Arcade?*
Hearing the words of middle-aged Joshua, Leon couldn't help but raise his brow slightly, recalling the task previously assigned by the Red-haired Director to investigate the arsonist haunting Louther Arcade.
*So the director indeed pinpointed the right target. If I hadn't gone to Rose Manor to rescue someone earlier, I might have encountered an Anomalous Object holder among the rebels even sooner... Speaking of which, the rebels have been setting fires for so long without really starting a massive fire; their purpose probably isn't just to attack the affluent areas, right?*
"Great! This is a good job!"
While Leon was frowning and thinking, the burn-scarred man took the map, glanced at it, and exposed a grin full of cold intent.
"When I used to work in the smelting plant, I almost got scalded to death by the molten material that came tumbling down. Those bastard factory owners insisted they had no money to compensate, but privately, they had money to live in such good houses. I've been dying to set a big one on fire for a long time!"
After casting a glance at Leon, who hadn't objected, the middle-aged man turned to look at the burn-scarred man and reminded him with a frown,
"Your goal isn't to injure more people but to cause widespread arson-induced panic, forcing those rich folks to pressure the police department and try to redirect all of the Capital City's patrol power there to facilitate other actions!"
"Yeah, yeah, isn't it just being a decoy?"
The burn-scarred man waved his hand impatiently,
"I'm very familiar with this job, definitely won't mess it up. Just tell me the next task already!"
Having no way to deal with this reckless guy, the middle-aged man once again took a deep breath and started sequentially assigning tasks to the rebels.
"Oliver will continue handling the transactions, but this time, apart from buying weapons from Ryan Family's munitions company, you should focus on using arms transactions to scout out several armory locations.
Taking advantage of the chaos during the military's power transition, we need to seize the opportunity to raid armories and try to acquire some high-powered weapons and bombs..."
"Next is Lucy and Luke, your tasks have changed. Lucy, you are to infiltrate the 'Gear' Shipping Company as a priority and investigate the situation of those private ships that do not accommodate regular passengers.
Meanwhile, Luke is to infiltrate the Boarding Tower, check the Sky Clipper schedules bound for Crolock Kingdom, and also plant bombs on crucial support structures in the Boarding Tower with those members recently retired from the military!"
Upon hearing the task assignments given by the middle-aged man, not only did Leon, seated at the end, have his pupils contract, but the entire room of rebels erupted in astonishment.
The portly Oliver was the first to stand up, asking in a daze,
"Sir Nathan! You want us to attack the Boarding Tower?"
"Precisely speaking, it's an attack on a Sky Clipper headed for Crolock Kingdom."
After correcting Oliver's words, the middle-aged man said with a steady gaze,
"Blowing up the Boarding Tower is only the last resort. What I truly hope for is to kill the Crolock Kingdom sniffers and retrieve the data on the kingdom's county minerals they possess."
*Crolock Kingdom sniffers? County mineral data of the Kingdom?*
"What's the point of retrieving those?"
The short Luke couldn't help but stand up, voicing his doubts,
"We can't even use that information, and that is Crolock Kingdom, the City of Machinery! The most powerful country in the western world! The kingdom hasn't even finished paying back the debt to them from six years ago!
Never mind whether this attack will succeed. If we really end up blowing up the Boarding Tower, killing those sniffers, under pressure from Crolock Kingdom, the entire kingdom would desperately hunt us down! Even if we succeeded in assassinating the King, the consequences might not be this severe!"
"I know, but this task still has to be done."
Facing the doubts from the rebels, the middle-aged man said,
"The reason I still can't explain to you, but just like the countless correct judgments I've made in key moments in the past, if we don't carry out this task, the outcome that awaits us and this country will only be worse!"
The middle-aged man tapped the table, announcing calmly,
"Regarding my true ability, all of you should have some suspicions. Now I can tell you directly that being able to shuttle between all the doors in the Capital City is indeed only part of my ability. My true ability is... Little Baskin? What are you doing?"
Getting up from his chair at the end of the long table, Leon walked to the door of the meeting room. Reaching out to touch the plaque on the door frame, he replied without looking back,
"Go ahead and say what you want, I'm just touching something."